To provide American farmers with access to a legal, stable supply of workers, the AG Act creates a new H-2C guestworker program designed to meet the needs of the diverse agriculture industry.
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This evening, the U.S. House of Representatives approved Congressman Bob Goodlatte’s (R-Va.) amendment to H.R. 3354, the Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, by a vote of 214-197. He was joined by Congressmen G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.), Bill Shuster (R-Ohio), and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) in introducing this amendment. Congressman Goodlatte released the following statement on passage of the amendment: “Congress intended that implementation of the Clean Water Act be a collaborative approac...
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Today, an op-ed by Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, appeared in Farm Policy Facts on the need to reform our nation’s agricultural guestworker program so that American farmers and ranchers have access to a reliable workforce when not enough Americans can be found to fill the jobs. Goodlatte soon plans to introduce a bill, the Agricultural Guestworker Act, to replace the H-2A program with a reliable, efficient, and fair program and provide American farm...
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Industrial hemp isn’t a new crop. In fact, hemp production was prevalent at the very beginning of our nation. Our Founding Fathers grew hemp for its fiber, and it was one of the largest cash crops in Colonial America. Thomas Jefferson even directed that “an acre of the best ground” at his Poplar Forest estate in Bedford County be kept as a permanent hemp patch. More recently, during World War II the federal government created a “Hemp for Victory” campaign to encourage cultivation of hemp fiber f...
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Over the past few days, I’ve made stops at farms and agribusinesses up and down the Shenandoah Valley to learn more from farmers and producers in my district about how the current farm economy and federal policies are impacting their operations. From walking rows of watermelons at the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction in Dayton to watching computerized machines milk cows in Rockbridge County, the agriculture industry in the Sixth District is as diverse as it is plentiful. One of the biggest take...
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